The present invention claims the Paris convention priority of European patent application 16191997.2 the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
The “background” description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description which may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly or impliedly admitted as prior art against the present invention.
Third and fourth generation mobile telecommunication systems, such as those based on the 3GPP defined UMTS and Long Term Evolution (LTE) architecture are able to support more sophisticated services than simple voice and messaging services offered by previous generations of mobile telecommunication systems. For example, with the improved radio interface and enhanced data rates provided by LTE systems, a user is able to enjoy high data rate applications such as mobile video streaming and mobile video conferencing that would previously only have been available via a fixed line data connection. The demand to deploy third and fourth generation networks is therefore strong and the coverage area of these networks, i.e. geographic locations where access to the networks is possible, is expected to increase rapidly. However, whilst fourth generation networks can support communications at high data rate and low latencies from devices such as smart phones and tablet computers, it is expected that future wireless communications networks will be expected to efficiently support communications with a much wider range of devices associated with a wider range of data traffic profiles, for example including reduced complexity devices, machine type communication devices, high resolution video displays and virtual reality headsets. Some of these different types of devices may be deployed in very large numbers, for example low complexity devices for supporting the “The Internet of Things”, and may typically be associated with the transmissions of relatively small amounts of data with relatively high latency tolerance, whereas other types of device, for example supporting high-definition video streaming, may be associated with transmissions of relatively large amounts of data with relatively low latency tolerance.
There is therefore expected to be a desire for future wireless communications networks, which may be referred to as 5G or new radio (NR) system/new radio access technology (RAT), networks, to efficiently support connectivity for a wide range of devices associated with different applications with different characteristic data traffic profiles, resulting in different devices having different operating characteristics/requirements, such as:                High latency tolerance        High data rates        Millimetre wave spectrum use        High density of network nodes (e.g. small cell and relay nodes)        Large system capacity        Large numbers of devices (e.g. MTC devices/Internet of Things devices)        High reliability (e.g. for vehicle safety applications, such as self-driving cars).        Low device cost and energy consumption        Flexible spectrum usage        Flexible mobility        Ultra-reliable and Low latency        
A 3GPP Study Item (SI) on New Radio Access Technology (NR) [1] has been proposed for studying and developing a new Radio Access Technology (RAT) for such a next generation wireless communication system. The new RAT is expected to operate in a large range of frequencies and it is expected to cover a broad range of use cases. Example use cases that are considered under this SI are:                Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB)        Massive Machine Type Communications (mMTC)        Ultra Reliable & Low Latency Communications (URLLC)        
eMBB services are typically high capacity services with a requirement to support up to 20 Gb/s. For efficient transmission of large amounts of data at high throughput, eMBB services are expected to use a long scheduling time so as to minimise the overhead, where scheduling time refers to the time available for data transmission between allocations. In other words, eMBB services are expected to have relatively infrequent allocation messages and to have longer time period allocated to data transmission in-between allocation messages.
On the other hand URLLC services are low latency services, wherein the latency is measured from the ingress of a layer 2 packet to its egress from the network, with a proposed target of 1 ms. URLLC data is generally expected to be short such that smaller scheduling times are generally expected compared to eMBB transmissions. As the skilled person will understand, eMBB transmissions and URLLC transmissions have different requirements and expectations, wherein high capacity and low overhead is desired for one while low latency is desired for the other.
It is therefore challenging to conceive a system which can accommodate both needs and where these two very different types of transmissions can be transmitted in a satisfactory manner. In view of this, there is a desire to provide arrangements and systems where high capacity and low latency transmissions can be communicated at the same time while trying to optimise resources utilisation for the system as a whole and for each type of transmission. In particular, in cases where there is a conflict between two transmissions, it could be beneficial to provide an arrangement where the potential negative impact of an urgent transmission on an existing transmission can be reduced.